walnuts

Yep. Walnut ketchup. Ketchup used to be a lot more varied than just tomatoes. This is a classic British recipe made with young, green walnuts – black walnuts, here – results in a sauce that tastes astonishingly like A1 steak sauce. Give it a go!

It’s nut season all over the country, and one of my favorites is the butternut, a relative of the black walnut. These cookies are by far my favorite way to eat them — and yes, they are wonderful with black walnuts, too.

Pickled walnuts? Yep, you read right. Pickled unripe, green walnuts is a British thing that originated because in parts of Britain the climate’s too harsh for walnuts to fully ripen. They take a while to make, but once you do, they are a great sweet-sour condiment to cheeses as well as cured and roasted meats.

Fall has finally hit, and I find myself in the Upper Midwest: wild rice country. It seems amazing that after all these years, I don’t have a recipe pairing wild rice and duck, which is a classic. Well, better late than never.